A methacrylic resin, which has high transparency, is useful as a material for a formed article used in an optical member, an illumination member, a signboard member, a decoration member or the like. However, a methacrylic resin for general forming has a glass transition temperature of as low as about 110° C., and thus a formed article comprising such methacrylic resin may have a problem of susceptibility to heat deformation.
A methacrylic resin having a high syndiotacticity is known to have a high glass transition temperature (see patent documents 1 and 2). However, since a methacrylic resin having a high syndiotacticity has inferior forming processability, a formed article comprising this methacrylic resin tends to have inferior surface smoothness. It is known that lowering the molecular weight can improve forming processability, but this may cause another problem that the resulting formed article has decreased mechanical strength. For this reason, a formed article comprising a methacrylic resin having a high syndiotacticity has not yet been available for practical use.